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Power and Politics in Player Piano Power and Politics in Player Piano An essay concerning power distribution in dystopian fiction Naam: Wilmar Kuilman Student nummer: 3147312 Begeleider: Barnita Bagchi Table of Content - Introduction 3 - The elite in dystopia 6 - Technology and power in dystopia 11 - Revolution in dystopia 15 - Conclusion 19 - Bibliography 20 2 Introduction In 1952 Kurt Vonnegut’s debut novel was published, it was called Player Piano. According to an interview in Playboy Magazine (July 1973), Vonnegut was working at General Electronic at the time. At General Electronic Vonnegut became inspired by a machine that cut rotor blades for airplanes. This machine was computer-operated and Vonnegut started wondering: What would happen if machines did all of our manual and routine mental labor? What if nobody is needed to operate these machines? In Player Piano Vonnegut portrays a society that has such machines. These machines have changed this society dramatically. In this society everybody has a reasonably good life, access to good health care, security, and access to a certain level of luxury. A small group of engineers and managers have an even better life, they seem to enjoy a greater wealth and power. At first glance this seems to be a nice society, however when looking slightly deeper the cracks begin to show. Since the machines have taken over all manual and routine mental labor there is no real dignity in most jobs, they are just there to give you something to do. Only the engineers and managers seem to have jobs that matter. In such a society meaning and dignity become scarce and you might even call such a society dystopian. Kurt Vonnegut (1922 – 2007) was one of the great 20th century American writers. He has written novels such as Cat’s Cradle (1963), Breakfast of Champions (1973), Player Piano (1952) and numerous short stories but is best known for Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). He grew up in a family of artists during the great depression and was warned to stay away from the arts; instead he should look for a real profession where money could be made. Because of this warning Vonnegut majored in chemistry when he went to college. However Vonnegut never became a chemist: before he finished his studies World War II broke out and, although Vonnegut was a self professed pacifist, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor Vonnegut enlisted. The war would have a profound effect on Vonnegut and would strongly influence his writing. In particular the bombing of Dresden left a mark on young Vonnegut. During the bombing of Dresden Vonnegut was a prisoner of war and was held captive in a slaughterhouse turned prison in Dresden. Vonneguts experiences during and leading up to the bombing of Dresden would later serve as the basis for the novel Slaughterhouse-Five. After the war Vonnegut returned to college and started studying anthropology. After his M.A. Thesis on ‘The Fluctuations Between Good and Evil in Simple Tales’ was rejected by the university’s faculty commission he stopped his studies and got a job at General Electric, the job that would influence him while writing his first novel Player Piano. 3 Since Player Piano is Vonnegut’s first novel it lacks some of the features of his later works. For example the recurring characters from his later novels, such as Kilgore Trout and Eliot Rosewater are not present in Player Piano. However Vonnegut’s black humour and satire are present in Player Piano, the science fiction elements are there and so are most of the themes that nearly always play a role in his later works, themes such as social inequality, religion and war. Another typical Vonnegut feature of Player Piano is its protagonist. In Player Piano Paul Proteus is the protagonist and just like Eliot Rosewater in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) and Winston Niles Rumfoort in The Sirens of Titan (1959), Paul Proteus is dissatisfied with his privileged position and feels badly for the people who are worse off in life. This dissatisfaction leads in all cases to a transformation of the elite to rebel. In 1954 Player Piano was rereleased under a new title Utopia 14 because the publisher thought this would improve sales of the novel under science fiction fans. Since Thomas Moore’s Utopia (1516) utopia has been the word used to describe perfect societies. However, as mentioned earlier, the society depicted in Player Piano is not such a great place and rather than a utopia it seems to be the opposite, a dystopia. Throughout the literary field there are many novels that play with dystopian themes but the most famous are probably George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Brave New World (1932) by Adolous Huxley but there are many more dystopian stories out there. The dystopian societies depicted in these stories vary widely and it seems that there are an infinite number of possible dystopias. However they also share some similarities and in this essay I will focus on one of these similarities, namely structures of power distribution. All dystopian novels depict dystopian societies and at the most basic level a society is a place where people live together under a common set of rules. This set of rules is also called a social contract in political philosophy and it is the basis for the authority or power a society has over its subjects. Every participant of a social contract hands in some of his freedoms and in exchange other participants of a social contract do the same. Within such a society people are given different amounts of power and different kinds of power. In our modern democratic society the police get the power to enforce these and our politicians get the power to write new rules and everybody gets the power to vote for in elections to choose our politicians. We call this structure of power distribution democracy but many other structures are possible, such as communism, socialism, fascism, anarchism etc. Within societies there are even more structures of power: for example, material wealth, social class, celebrity, knowledge and physical strength can all be sources of power with their own distribution structures. Sometimes these sources of power are coupled and at other times they are completely separate. 4 In dystopian novels the way power is distributed can be a reason why dystopia is so dystopian. It is a fascinating subject and therefore the main question I will try to answer in this essay is: to what extent do systems of power distribution play a role in dystopian fiction? In my search for an answer to this question I will focus on the novel Player Piano by Kurt Vonnegut, but I will also bring in references to other dystopian texts including: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) by Philip K. Dick and The Sirens of Titan also by Kurt Vonnegut. To support my arguments I look at the interplay between power and three elements of dystopian societies. The first is the elite: I will look at the questions why do some people get the power they get in dystopian societies? Is it good to be part of the elite in dystopia? Secondly, technology often plays an important role in dystopian stories and therefore a closer look at the interplay between technology and power is warranted. Here I will look at technology as the origin of the power structures of dystopia and I will look at the place machines can take themselves in structures of power. The third element of the dystopian narrative that is examined is revolution. Here I will look at the two revolutions of importance that take place in Player Piano and I will look at how revolution can be part of the begin end and status quo of dystopia. 5 The elite in dystopia According to the Cambridge dictionary elite means: “those people or organizations that are considered the best or most powerful compared to others of a similar type”. Both the best and especially the most powerful seem to have an important role in dystopian fiction. This implies that there are others with less power; the word elite implies inequality. To find out why certain elites are more powerful than other people in a society I will have to look at the origin of a society, the social contract. Thereafter I will examine if is it a good thing to be part of the elite in dystopia? From 1642 to 1651 England was in a state of civil war. This period is also known as the Great Rebellion or the English Revolution. The so called Long Parliament sought to overthrow the king and form a sort of Republic of England. Thomas Hobbes was a staunch supporter of the King and was even appointed mathematics instructor to the young Prince of Wales in 1646. (Tromp 12) With all this going on in the background Thomas Hobbes wrote the Leviathan, which was first published in 1651. Leviathan is a philosophical treatise concerning politics and power and is one of the first philosophical treatises about the theory of social contract. The ideas Hobbes has about the social contract and the way society should be organized can be summarized as follows. Before a society is formed people live in what is called the state of nature. This is a state of being that according to Hobbes is a war of all against all. Everybody has the right and the ability to kill anybody else if they choose to do so. Because this state of nature is rather harsh, people will want to form societies that offer them protection from this war of all against all.
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